Why no SW Coop LCG?

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I am a old time and avid Board gamer. I've been following FFG since DOOM the first edition. I love coop. Never played card game for all I knew were PvP games. A couples of months ago I tried LOTR LCG not expecting much. Oh gosh I was so wrong. It's one of the best coop experience we can put on the table. We play it A LOT.

Add to this that Star Wars is really our thing. I am so sad there is no such coop card game story driven with heroes at the core for SW.

Now I know they did it for Arkham horror wich is less my thing. Do we have any news? Any rumors? And hint at a possible SW coop LCG?

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I'm sorry but there's no chance that a new LCG will come before Christmas this year.

L5R just came out and SW and LoTR are still alive. I doubt we'll see a new SW LCG with one already out there and the same for a coop LCG when there's already 2 of them (and with 1 only 1 year old). Moreover, FFG likes to pre-release its new LCG at GenCon for a true release in fall (which happened with L5R this year) and to release 1 new LCG per year.

So, your best hope would be for next GenCon if SW is discontinued in the next months (and probably only if LoTR is also discontinued which I doubt for at least 1 more year).

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Oh god yes. L5R just hit stores five days ago and Netrunner's core set is being relaunched after long delays caused by (IMO) a larger-than-planned demand for L5R. Logistically, they couldn't launch an A-List product before EOY.

AT BEST you're looking at an announcement in the next few months and a Gen Con 2018 debut, but even that is entirely speculative.

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It would be trivial to make a coop LCG where the player cards are generally the same with some light side and some dark side specific. Give each character "class" a set of Rebel and Imperial heroes. Standard rules say you can't mix factions within a team. With even a little creativity, the player's faction would impact the campaign. At the end of any given mission, read ABC to a Rebel team or XYZ to an Imperial team. The overall story would barely have to change if written correctly. The game would also have more replay value as you might want to see the scenario from an opposing viewpoint.

Using Arkham Horror as an example...

Add a set of Investigators with a "Cultist" keyword... 1-2 for each color. If one Investigator in a given team has the "Cultist" keyword, they all must.

Add a couple of player cards to each of the 5 colors with a "Cult Secrets" keyword that means something like "Can only be included in decks where the Investigator has the Cultist keyword". These cards might be things like an Ally that is some sort of summoned monster. Cult stuff!

Add a second set of Act and Agenda cards to the scenarios with the story being slightly altered such that the Cultists are trying to discover the secrets to the scenario with the intention of forcing the "bad ending" instead of preventing it. In other words, while the good Investigators are searching for clues in order to find the cultists and stop them before they can summon a big bad, the Cultists Investigators are searching for clues in order to either find and evade the good guys or to figure out how to summon the big bad.

I think it's very doable. Might actually be a fun exercise to mock something up in Strange Aeons as a generic "Cultist Expansion" for Arkham Horror.

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It would be trivial to make a coop LCG where the player cards are generally the same with some light side and some dark side specific. Give each character "class" a set of Rebel and Imperial heroes. Standard rules say you can't mix factions within a team. With even a little creativity, the player's faction would impact the campaign. At the end of any given mission, read ABC to a Rebel team or XYZ to an Imperial team. The overall story would barely have to change if written correctly. The game would also have more replay value as you might want to see the scenario from an opposing viewpoint.

Using Arkham Horror as an example...

Add a set of Investigators with a "Cultist" keyword... 1-2 for each color. If one Investigator in a given team has the "Cultist" keyword, they all must.

Add a couple of player cards to each of the 5 colors with a "Cult Secrets" keyword that means something like "Can only be included in decks where the Investigator has the Cultist keyword". These cards might be things like an Ally that is some sort of summoned monster. Cult stuff!

Add a second set of Act and Agenda cards to the scenarios with the story being slightly altered such that the Cultists are trying to discover the secrets to the scenario with the intention of forcing the "bad ending" instead of preventing it. In other words, while the good Investigators are searching for clues in order to find the cultists and stop them before they can summon a big bad, the Cultists Investigators are searching for clues in order to either find and evade the good guys or to figure out how to summon the big bad.

I think it's very doable. Might actually be a fun exercise to mock something up in Strange Aeons as a generic "Cultist Expansion" for Arkham Horror.

I think that is way too much work for little payoff. You would have to change a lot of stuff to flip the viewpoint. And you definitely can't mix light and dark side. Coop cards are already divided by enoucnter vs player cards, you can't divide the player cards in half.

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I think that is way too much work for little payoff. You would have to change a lot of stuff to flip the viewpoint. And you definitely can't mix light and dark side. Coop cards are already divided by enoucnter vs player cards, you can't divide the player cards in half.

I didn't say that you would divide them in half. You'd effectively have three kinds of cards... dark, light and neutral. Neutral cards would make up the majority of the cards. Dark and light cards would be rare. I'm imagining that there would only be a handful of dark and light cards. Force lighting is a very Star Wars sort of thing, but it's also clearly a dark side thing. It would make sense to make that a dark side card. In the movies, Han's trusty DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol isn't inherently a light side thing. It would instead be a neutral card. Etc, etc. Anyone can use a DL-44. Not everyone can use Force lighting. Same goes for a handful of light side things. Generally speaking, though, most cards/abilities/effects would be usable by either faction.

To use Arkham Horror as an example again... There are five different character roles (Guardian, Mystic, Rogue, Seeker, Survivor). Each role has 14 different player cards in the Core Set. With my idea above, you'd instead have 12 neutral cards, one dark side card and one light side card for each role. The neutral role cards would likely be all neutral, i.e. neither dark nor light. A full cycle is usually a deluxe expansion plus six scenario packs. A deluxe expansion typically has twice the player cards as a scenario pack, so we're just going to call it eight scenario packs to make the math easy. Each pack typically has two copies each of two different new cards for each role. Over the course of the cycle, each role ends up with two copies each of 16 new cards. Of those 16, I'd probably make 12 neutral, two dark side and two light side. That way, Rebel and Imperial would both play roughly the same with each faction/role combo having a handful of tricks not available to the other side.

I really don't think it would be too hard to make a coop game that allows a group of players to play as either Rebels or Imperials. Write the missions such that player motivation and reward is different, but the actual scenario is essentially the same.

Rebels have been tasked with recovering a new weapon plans from an Imperial Outpost/Imperials have been tasked with finding evidence that an Imperial Outpost Commander is a Rebel traitor. Outpost Commander is currently away on a training mission or something.

Players of both sides start at a secret landing site not far from the Outpost.

Players of both sides must discover a way to enter the base without setting off alarms.

Players of both sides must solve some sort of puzzle or uncover enough 'clues' to locate the weapon plans/evidence of betrayal. Outpost Commander 'spawns' at this point by arriving in a shuttle.

Players of both sides must defeat the Outpost Commander and his minions to complete the scenario.

Post Scenario Review...

Congrats Rebels, you've found the weapon plans. The Imperial war effort is now down one capable Commander. Victory!

Congrats Imperials, you've unmasked a rebel traitor. The Imperial war effort is now stronger due to your efforts. Victory!

Add in resolutions for each side failing. Ultimately, both sides are playing the same scenario with a few paragraphs of exposition swapped around.

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That would be basically creating 2 different scenarios, Or it would be too generic.

And the amount of scenarios you could complete would be limited. How do you justify the imperial fighting Darth Vader? Especially when you want to play as him as an Inperial.

Several points...

You typically wouldn't be playing as one of the named characters in a coop game. You'd be playing as a generic dude created specifically for the game. Look at Imperial Assault. You're not playing as Luke. You're playing as some dude nobody has ever heard of who eventually runs into Luke (and might get to use him as an ally in a handful of scenarios).

As to why Imperials would be fighting Vader... go pick up the recent Darth Vader comic books. Any writer worth his paycheck can come up with a dozen reasons why a generic Imperial agent would be firing on Darth Vader. For every "that would be impossible", someone with a healthy imagination can give you a dozen reasons why it would not only be possible, but compelling as well.

I do, however, think that if we ever see a coop LCG for Star Wars that the players will be playing as Rebel agents fighting various threats to the Rebellion. Generic Stormtroopers tend to work better as faceless enemies than they do as interesting protagonists (with apologies to FN-2187). I'd rather play as the Imperials, but these sorts of games always have us as good guys.

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The whole point to the card game's is to play as your favorite characters. Faceless nobodies may work for miniatures, but you don't play LotR to be a random spearman from Gondor.

If it happens, You will be the heroes of the Rebellion fighting to save the galaxy. Darth Vader and Boba Fett would be elite enemies to face.

Having both dark and light side playable characters would just create too much constraints on scenarios.

I disagree that you'd play as the named heroes. That's not generally how coop works. If you're playing IA coop, you're playing as a no name. It you're playing RPG coop, you're playing as a no name. It stands to reason, and would be easier to design scenarios, that a coop LCG would use no name heroes. Johnny Mechanic-Guy teams up with Force Sensitive Susan to take down the Empire. Along the way, they briefly encounter Luke, who acts as their ally. Design space is wide open.

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LotR you play as the Fellowship and other named characters. In Arkham Horror you play as specific investigators with unique character traits.

It works for RPGs and miniatures because there is more room for expanding. But cards are about images and pictures, nobody wants to just look at some random rebel.

You win. Everything is impossible. No amount of imagination or creativity could create a coop system that allowed for both Rebel and Imperial players. Might as well just give up. Congrats. Your negativity and 'can't do' attitude has won the day.

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I didn't day it was impossible. I said it wouldn't fit within the limitations of the product. Any scenario that you can just do a few things to tweak the characters story is too generic to create immersion for the players.

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I didn't day it was impossible. I said it wouldn't fit within the limitations of the product. Any scenario that you can just do a few things to tweak the characters story is too generic to create immersion for the players.

I fear, my friend, that you lack imagination. We're also talking a card game here. There's only so much immersion taking place. I'm just saying that a good writer could write a story that could be experienced from two viewpoints while still being compelling, interesting and fun. You clearly can't imagine such a thing. It's all good. The World of Warcraft people do it all the time. The Horde and the Alliance are generally at war with each other, yet frequently complete the same quest lines with different dialogue and setup/ending paragraphs. The action is the same, but the story and character motivations are completely different.

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I fear, my friend, that you lack imagination. We're also talking a card game here. There's only so much immersion taking place. I'm just saying that a good writer could write a story that could be experienced from two viewpoints while still being compelling, interesting and fun. You clearly can't imagine such a thing. It's all good. The World of Warcraft people do it all the time. The Horde and the Alliance are generally at war with each other, yet frequently complete the same quest lines with different dialogue and setup/ending paragraphs. The action is the same, but the story and character motivations are completely different.

There is a lot more room in an MMO. With these card games you have to fit it into a 160 card box, and 6 60 card packs. There is not as much room as you think.

And while it can be done, it creates severe limitations. It is just not worth the effort compared to the goal.

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I could see them doing it multiple ways, though some are more realistic than others. They could do a core set with a few characters from each side, light and dark, and three scenarios. One would be a vanilla starting scenario that could work for both light and dark with differing things to read going in and out. The other two could both come out of that scenario being very specific to light and dark storywise. That way three scenarios would make for four plays as you would want to play the first one twice for each faction. From there a deluxe expansion could work much the way way with monthly adventure packs focusing on one faction continuing the story from their perspective. So maybe packs one, four, and five could be from the perspective of the dark side with a new dark side character coming in each and packs two, three, and six could be light side with a light side character in each. It wouldn't have to alternate between light and dark back and forth, it would go however the story demanded. I could also see each deluxe and six packs just focusing on one side, light or dark, the obvious problem with that being all your light or dark cards would be shelved for months at a time. The way I'd personally like it having played The Lord of the Rings LCG is to play as the light side with the dark side as the villains in the encounter deck. Sure, I'd like to play as Darth Vader, but just as I might enjoy killing things as the Witch-king when his card shows up in from the encounter deck that moment of "oh ****" is worth it to not play as him. I feel like those rare moments when suddenly Darth Vader's card is drawn from the encounter deck with some brilliantly menacing artwork and stats to **** yourself will be worth not playing as him. Also, there are more named light side characters than dark side characters in Star Wars and I'd rather not be flooded with made up FFG dark side characters no matter how compelling their included stories may be. I play the Arkham Horror LCG as well and hope the story would come across better like it does in that. There are many things I prefer in AH LCG to LOTR LCG and I can only assume they would continue in that path of improving their LCGs rather than take steps backwards. Do you guys feel like not playing as Darth Vader is a deal breaker?

On a side note, KrisWall when you tell someone they're being negative, say things like "I fear, my friend, that you lack imagination", and throw a digital book at them about not being negative you don't come off as a happy warrior, but rather as someone being infinitely more negative. Reading the thread I didn't read any of Radix2309's comments as negative but rather as him putting forth what he considered to be, in his opinion, realistic ideas for the game. On the other hand, I found you unwilling to accept that others might have a different opinion than you and feeling the need to say there's something wrong with them (he lacks imagination, he's negative) because they can't see or agree with your grand plan. In the month and a half since the last post in this thread (sorry for digging it up) he could've just as easily posted a link for you to a book about how to be classy in the face of adversity. Interesting that he did not. And yes, I apologize for that last bit as I clearly didn't read the classy book either.

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Ok, first off, I have no idea what a "happy warrior" is. I certainly wasn't attempting to be overtly happy... or hostile. I was attempting to vent my frustration in a forum friendly way.

Quotes from Radix2309 in this thread, all from different posts responding to my ideas.

"I think that is way too much work for little payoff."

"...the amount of scenarios you could complete would be limited."

"Having both dark and light side playable characters would just create too much constraints on scenarios."

"Any scenario that you can just do a few things to tweak the characters story is too generic to create immersion for the players."

"It is just not worth the effort compared to the goal."

I get that I was being a little snarky, but let's call a duck a duck. This guy was being extremely negative. He posted over and over shooting down my ideas. Maybe he's a game designer who has been down this path before and found it to be impossible. I doubt that's the case. Every time I posted a solution, he was quick to tell me that the solution wouldn't work or that it wasn't worth the effort. I realize that this is the internet and that everyone has his/her opinion, but don't pretend like I'm the negative one here. I was proposing solutions, not shooting them down.

To add something positive to this post as I've been thinking about this a bit and discussing with friends...

Another option would be to keep the game Rebel only and then release "nightmare packs" down the line that add/remove cards from existing scenarios to "reskin" them for Imperial use. You'd also need to add in some Imperial player options. I could see a special deluxe expansion that adds the necessary Imperial player options, some player cards and "nightmare packs" for the core box and first cycle. Unlikely, but certainly doable for a decent game design team.

A better option is to set it up so that the players take on the role of a series of bounty hunters, tasked with different missions. Some missions would see you fight alongside Vader, while others might see you play alongside Luke. Each Deluxe Expansion/Pack Cycle could focus on a different overall narrative. The first would likely see you as "good guys", helping the Rebellion. The second could see you as Imperial agents, taking on tasks assigned by the Empire. This is actually how I'd lay out the game. With a setup like this, you just need a couple of paragraphs explaining the players' motivations at the start of each campaign.

"Your commlink beeps and you look down to see the data signature of a high ranking Imperial agent. As you thumb the activation switch, you wonder what job he'll offer this time..."

"As you make your way through the marketplace, a women crashes into you. 'HELP! The Princess will pay handsomely for my safe return!', she yells. As you look past her, you see the unmistakable gleam of Stormtrooper armor coming towards you..."

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Ok, first off, I have no idea what a "happy warrior" is. I certainly wasn't attempting to be overtly happy... or hostile. I was attempting to vent my frustration in a forum friendly way.

I get that I was being a little snarky, but let's call a duck a duck. This guy was being extremely negative. He posted over and over shooting down my ideas.

Maybe he's a game designer who has been down this path before and found it to be impossible. I doubt that's the case. Every time I posted a solution, he was quick to tell me that the solution wouldn't work or that it wasn't worth the effort. I realize that this is the internet and that everyone has his/her opinion, but don't pretend like I'm the negative one here. I was proposing solutions, not shooting them down.

When someone is continually laying out flawed or unappealing ideas, it’s entirely reasonable to point out their shortcomings.

A response to that which is actuallypositive would be to incorporate those criticisms, address the flaws, and improve your ideas. A response that is negative would be to dismiss criticisms and instead go after your critics’ motivations, attitudes, and supposed lack of imagination.

I don’t see where you’ve done anything but ignore any other opinions except your own. That’s not a positive contribution.

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When someone is continually laying out flawed or unappealing ideas, it’s entirely reasonable to point out their shortcomings.

A response to that which is actuallypositive would be to incorporate those criticisms, address the flaws, and improve your ideas. A response that is negative would be to dismiss criticisms and instead go after your critics’ motivations, attitudes, and supposed lack of imagination.

I don’t see where you’ve done anything but ignore any other opinions except your own. That’s not a positive contribution.

Go back and re-read the thread. I tried to consistently offer examples (some real world) of how my idea could work when faced with (generally vague) criticism, thus attempting to address said criticism. Radix2309 pretty consistently responded by saying my ideas either wouldn't work or wouldn't be worth the effort. At a certain point, such nay saying starts to feel like troll behavior.

What's your end game here? Just curious. At this point, you're adding nothing to the topic and stirring the pot on a conversation that had clearly ended a while ago. To quote you, "that's not a positive contribution".